Richard Riche (July 1496 – ), lawyer and member of Parliament, a protege of Thomas Audley.
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
We meet Riche first at Austin Friars, introduced as Audley’s protege, “a golden-haired young man, pretty as a painted angel, who has an active, quick and secular mind.”
Week 14: Devil's Spit / A Painter’s Eye
Riche turns out to have a talent for drafting legislation which is second only to his own. His features, beneath his osft fair hair, are pinched with concentration; the boys call him Sir Purse.
He takes his job seriously. He reads Machiavelli but perhaps lacks imagination. And when the Nun of Kent says they should boil Princess Elizabeth, Riche throws his pen down.
He is a tender young father, with a daughter in the cradle.
New treason laws will be needed for these traitors, Riche says. “I have it in hand,” says Cromwell.
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
When Thomas More is given his final chance, Riche comes to make notes. Afterwards, when he takes away More’s books, he has a lawyerly chat with More. He gets the prisoner to concede that Parliament has no jurisdiction over matters spiritual. It is treason. Riche vows to testify in court, where More can’t help but remind the court of Riche’s wayward student days.
“He will never let it drop, what I did as a boy. He uses me to make his sermon on. Well, let him make his next sermon on the block.”
Week 19: Crows (Part 1)
The boys call him Sir Purse; Purse is getting fatter, they say. The cares of office have fallen on him, the duties of the father of a growing family; once a golden boy, he looks to be covered by a faint patina of dust. Who would have thought he would be Solicitor General? But then he has a good lawyer’s brain, and when you want a good lawyer, he is always at hand.
Also:
Troubled men both, he thinks, Wriothesley and Riche, and alike in some ways, sidling around the peripheries of their own souls, tapping at the walls: oh, what is that hollow sound? But he has to produce to the king men of talent; and they are agile, they are tenacious, they are unsparing in their efforts for the Crown, and for themselves.